Broken
by Personification of Fluff
Summary: Everyone who grew up around Sango and Miroku know their "grope/slap" relationship is just part of their strange flirting ceremonies. There's nothing vicious in it. But put them both in a new town, and Sango's loss of temper gets her into trouble. Angst.


**Title:** Broken

**Rating:** R, just to be on the safe side. Domestic abuse isn't a topic to be taken lightly.

**Summary:** Putting Sango's slapping, which we all find cute and humorous, into modern perspectives.

**AN: **I felt like writing angst one day. I sat down at my computer and typed this out. Call me a wuss, but I think I was bawling the whole time. I wanted to put this one up before I finish _Turn_ so that there will be something happy coming. One-shot.

_______

**_Broken_**

_Miss Taijiya, you're going to have to get in the back of the police truck. I'll need to take you down to the police station to ask you a few questions._

She could still clearly remember being stopped by the officer as she walked home from work. She remembered seeing him and hoping, praying, that maybe it was her husband, Miroku, pulling over to give her a ride home in the cold winter weather. She could still remember how he took her purse, almost being gentlemanly, and how she'd willingly climbed into the back of the car.

Then he'd walked around to the front, climbed in, turned on his tape recorder, and said the word that made her world came crumbling down so fast only afterwards was she aware of it.

_Are you aware you're being arrested on assault?_

It had begun so innocently. They'd met in high school, and Sango and Miroku had taken an instant liking to each other. Sango had been one of the boys, for all that she dressed like a girl, with her long hair pulled back in an innocent white bow. She played football, basketball, and wrestled with them despite being smaller and built along graceful lines. Sometimes she even won. She was a team player, and never gave up; Miroku liked that about her.

She liked that he was always so charming and witty. He loved trying to make her blush, which was annoyingly simple, to Sango. It seemed that they couldn't, at first, have a conversation without him managing to make her cheeks turn so red she had to flee the room to make it ebb. It wasn't long before he discovered that she had a wicked sense of dignity and justice, and he teased it mercilessly.

But the truth was that they both enjoyed the teasing, and it became a pattern. Miroku would say or do something to get her angry, she'd give him a slap upside the head, and he would respond by pining her town and torturing her until she had to had escape to the washroom lest she pee her pants. There was a time when he'd licked her and she had squealed and insulted how badly his breath smelled. There was another time when he stole her socks and stretched them all out of shape by wearing them himself. There was another time when he'd tickled her until she'd been begging to be let up, tears of laughter streaming over her cheeks.

All their friends in high school friends thought they were hilarious and adorable when they did start to date. They had suspected that all the wrestling and play fighting had been a long and powerful flirtation, so powerful that even when they got together romantically, it didn't change.

In fact, it almost became a kind of foreplay for them. Miroku would say something that was callous or grope her bottom, Sango would give him a slap upside the head or flick his ear. Sometimes he'd avoid it, and tackle her instead, fling her over his shoulder, and carry her to the bedroom where he would pin her on the bed and begin kissing her or nuzzling her neck until the anger subsided and she was responding in kind, stripping his clothes off of him greedily.

They'd been together for more than five years when Miroku finally got a job as a police officer. They had been moved to a small community in northern Japan. Both of them liked it there. It was quiet and peaceful. Sango and Miroku saw their house backing into the trees and imagined coffee on the patio watching deer, boating on the nearby river, and hiking together. Sango imagined play fights in the snow, how the white snowflakes would look in Miroku's midnight-dark hair, and how they could go inside and snuggle together under the blankets after a thorough trouncing.

But before that could happen came the Christmas party. Sango had already been feeling a little melancholy. It was their first Christmas away from their families, and despite Christmas lights and bringing out all the decorations she had, the house didn't seem festive. Where was the Christmas music? The shopping? The slushy roads and the Christmas lights on every house, where she and her brother had been able to drive their parents mad trying to see who could count the most lit-up-houses whenever they went out?

The party didn't help. Only one person had initiated conversation with her. Everyone else was drinking. Where were the carols? Where the fun games? She couldn't even help in the kitchen, for when she did she was shooed out with a friendly 'we have everything under control'.

At least Miroku was socializing. Sango thought he was a social butterfly. He could charm a room in seconds, with his good lucks and smooth voice. Sometimes, so could she, but when she was bored out of her mind and unable to smile from the threat of tears pulling her down… all she wanted to do was to go home, maybe cuddle with her cat Kirara…

After dinner she snuck upstairs and collapsed on the couch in the living room. She did sleep, if inconsistently. Some people snuck up and sat on the love seat, talking. She still tried to sleep. She wanted to go home.

Then the gang came up to open the gifts under tree, Miroku in their lead. He gave her bottom a slight tap, laughing, telling her to 'wake up, Hon'. She ignored him. He did it again. This time she cracked open an eye, and saw that he already had his hand out, palm open, waiting to stop the blow he knew was coming. She ignored the third one, and then groggily began to sit up, and that was when she noticed the fact that there were those two people, sitting on the love seat, well aware that her husband had just been spanking her to get her to wake up…

She got up, and leaned over to where he sat, two seats to her left, and smacked him upside the head, as she normally did. She didn't even use the palm of her hand, just her fingers, but it still made a solid sound connecting, which was really the point. She didn't want to hurt him, just warn him away. The lack of smile and a playful laugh made it clear: I'm hurt, and offended, and I don't want to be touched.

Instantly, she felt worse. She's just hit him in front of his peers. What would they think? Would they lose respect for him? God, what if Miroku was mad at her? Sango couldn't stand it when he got mad at her. He was her rock, her life saver… together they could take whatever the world threw at them, but they needed to be _together_.

He wasn't there as his co-worker told her she was being arrested for assault, or as she tried to verbalize that she understood as he read Sango her rights. All she could manage was a small little 'okay' every time he paused. She didn't really know what was happening. She knew she had the right to silence, but didn't that only apply when you were in the court? She knew she had the right to the lawyer, but was there one in their small little town? Where would they find a lawyer? Was she going to be put into a jail cell? Did the charge come with jailtime? Was she going to be taken away from Miroku?

They drove to the office, Sango sobbing in the back seat. She felt bad for the arresting officer—just two nights ago he'd been over watching a movie with his own wife, eating popcorn and chips, petting Kirara as she sucked up to anybody that would brush her—and now he was arresting her.

She was led into a small room, told to sit. He put the chair where he needed it and held it out for her. She made note of that. She spotted the phone on the desk and watched as he unplugged it. Sango had asked to call Miroku on the way over. She wanted to let him know what was happening, that she wouldn't be home on time for supper, but apparently that wasn't going to happen now. Didn't they give you a right to a phone call? There was always a phone call in movies; she remembered that.

He asked her questions: _How long have you two been together? Did you grow up in a small town together? Has this type of thing happened before?_

She answered them all honestly: Five years, known him for eleven. We went to high school together. We hit each other all the time… and then she knew she'd fucked up.

Hadn't it been obvious at the Christmas party? None of them knew her. None of them knew the side of Miroku she did. How could she possibly convey—particularly in the wet, sobbing state she was in—how when she'd gotten her H1N1 shot, Miroku had laughed at her pain and laid on her stomach, giving her Charlie horses until she was crying and laughing at the same time, uncertain if she wanted to kiss him or throw herself on him for a hug. How could she explain snowshoeing with him and getting into a snowball fight? How could she explain the way they loved pushing each other's buttons, and how he could pin her so easily, finding her anger as cute and adorable as a wet kitten?

It had made her want to laugh when she found out the charges were for her. Spousal abuse from a female, unarmed, against a man who'd taken five years of martial arts, two years of Russian martial arts, who had sixty pounds on her, an extra foot of height, and was a cop to boot?

When Miroku had asked, she'd told him everything that had transpired in that little room. That was only asked the day after. For the first night, she was only able to sob into his chest. Even the simplest sentence was intersperessed with hiccups at each syllable. She had barely been able to eat. Lunch was a few grapes and some slices of apple. She eventually fell asleep, in front of the tv, and when he came home, this time he woke her up by carrying her off to the bedroom and placing her in bed with him. He drew her close and held her like he needed to, which he did. Sango allowed herself to be held, the curves of their bodies fitting together like a match made in heaven…

But she couldn't sleep. She couldn't look at him in uniform without seeing the arresting officer. She remembered fondly how when he'd first started his job she had helped him dress, taking pride in the uniform he wore, never complaining about washing it or how the pile of his uniform shirts grew slowly as he put off doing the ironing.

She got up and headed back to the couch, curling up under a pile of blankets, sobbing from the pain of knowing that something inside of her had shifted. There was a time when sleeping without him in bed with her had been impossible. On those nights when he was at work, she would take the laptop to bed and throw on a movie, falling asleep to the Venture Brothers, or Super Troopers or one of the other cheesy things Miroku liked to watch. It made him feel closer, like he could be down the hall ready to come to bed, and she was able to find rest in that. Now it was the opposite, and it hurt her deeply.

She thought of the times she'd imagined snow fights with him. Goodbye, pushing him into a snow bank. Goodbye giggle fights over the blankets, where one of them would always fall off the couch. Goodbye playwrestling. Every time she thought of what they did have, it was tainted with the memory of her wail, _Oh dear God, no_, when the officer red the charge.

How could she get them to understand? How could they understand how she loved it when he was a jerk, because he did just to aggravate her, flirting with her into losing her temper and breaking out of her shell?

When she woke up the following morning, she headed into the bathroom. Her eyes were red and bloodshot from the lack of sleep. Her whole body felt tired. She had been cold all night, despite wearing two heavy blankets on the couch, shaking from the shock to her system. Her brown hair was tangled and matted. _If someone took a picture of me now,_ she thought bitterly, _I would look like a wife-beater. I look insane._

And as she stared at herself, she thought of the arresting officer as he drove her home—this time, thankfully, in the front seat. _You might have to go to spousal therapy,_ he had told her, when she had asked for the possible outcomes of her Notice to Appear in Court. _You have to find the silver lining. Maybe this will make your relationship stronger._

_Stronger._ Sango could have laughed. The thing that had broken inside of her, the never-give-up spirit her husband had loved so very much and fed with his antics, had broken away and crumbled, decaying slowly in the pit of her stomach, making her feel nauseous. She couldn't look at her husband in uniform anymore. She couldn't stop crying. She couldn't sleep next to him without beginning to sob. She couldn't kiss him, couldn't bring herself to kiss him goodbye when he left for work because of the uniform jacket he wore, couldn't stand the idea of being sexually intimate with him because she felt like somehow, she'd betrayed him, because she felt unattractive to him knowing that in one fell swoop, someone had taken the most intimate thing they could take from her:

They had taken her spirit. They had taken back the friendship they had offered when she'd first arrived in town. They had taken her best friend from her, the dark-haired high school boy who'd reached out to grope her one day and had captured her heart.

She didn't recognize herself in the mirror. She looked insane, wild and gaunt.

This wouldn't make her relationship stronger.

They had broken it with her arrest, when with that low, moaning wail, they had broken her.


End file.
